


Don't You Wish on Me

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Incest, M/M, Twincest, hal dyes his hair pink at some point idk how strongly some people might feel about this, non-sburb AU, takes break from writing twincest to write more twincest par for the course, there's an oblique reference to boners but if that's too much for T i don't know what to say to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sorry ‘bout the blood on your jacket," you mumble as you burrow your nose in the hood. "Wish it was mine."</p>
<p>DirkHal || Non-SBURB AU || Angst+ Twincest</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Wish on Me

You’re six years old when you ask Dirk to marry you.

Your meager salary of ‘three animal crackers and whatever you can find in the couch cushions’ per week is not exactly he-went-to-Jared material, so you improvise. You’ve seen Roxy thread daisies together to put in Jane’s hair enough times to get the general idea, and by attempt nineteen you have it down to a science. (You’ll apologize for the sparseness in Miss Lalonde’s yard later. Probably. Maybe.)

"Marry me," you say from behind him, dangling the crown above his head. He is, as per usual, hunched over the tiny-tyke desk you both share, the light from the window catching on the nonsense-designs beneath his pencil. A rogue petal or two falls into the blond of his hair. "Or I might die."

When he peers up at you, not even bothering to turn around fully, he looks decidedly unimpressed by your theatrics. Well. That’s disappointing. “We’re brothers,” is the first thing out of his mouth, like neither of you are six years old and prone to this sort of flight of fancy. “I think you’ll be okay.” And then he sneezes, once, twice, and you feel guilty for laughing because God, you shouldn’t have forgotten his allergies were so much more sensitive than yours, but the look on his face—

Dirk never really cares when you take top bunk, but you decide to let him have it that night anyway.

 

 

Things are in a pretty constant state of change between you two, but the most distinct rift probably comes in freshman year, when your parents die in a plane crash and Dirk’s-and-your friends become Dirk’s friends. People cope differently; you dye your hair pink and start throwing yourself into every shitty TV series or social media site you can find, while Dirk actually starts trying to build what he designs and cuts off any friends that aren’t named Roxy, Jake, or Jane. And that’s okay, your counselor assures you during one of your mandatory weekly sessions, because people cope differently. Dirk’s newfound coldness toward you and the rest of the world (minus three) will surely subside, and until then you’ve just got to respect his desire for space. It’s (supposedly) all you can do in a situation like this.

You start staying out a little later, flirting a little more, letting the marks sucked into your skin creep into areas lower or more visible, just to watch Dirk’s fingers trip over his spoon at the breakfast table some mornings.

People cope differently.

 

 

Jake has always been your least favorite, and that is in no way based in bias on your part. After all, Jane’s been making you and Dirk separate birthday cakes every year since you were five, Roxy is hilarious and her generosity with her liquor supply (and cats) is generally unmatched, and Dirk is. Well. The competition is stiff, to say the least, and it doesn’t help that Jake’s been uncomfortable with you around ever since an identity-swap-centric prank you played on him when you were all ten.

Walking in on him essentially eating your brother’s face is just par for the course, really.

"I guess this means you get bottom bunk from now on," you say slowly, bobbing awkwardly to the other side of the room to boot your laptop. You think you hate him. You don’t know which him you’re talking about.

"H- _Hal,_ " Dirk says, and he doesn’t raise his voice, but the’s breathless enough that he stumbles over that first sound and fuck, he’s going to kill you if you don’t leave right this second.

You lounge in the office chair he bought and hammer your password into the keyboard.

Jake clears his throat, and you must not hate him that much, because you’d almost forgotten he was here at all. “Well, Str— Dirk. It’s probably right time I get home anyway. Would you like to, er… study at my place after school tomorrow?”

You stifle a snort and make a point to watch them both as Dirk stumbles through an agreement, scrambles off Jake’s lap and back onto the bed as Jake bolts for the door. The bed you slept in last night. Goddammit. 

"What the  _hell_  was that?” Dirk starts as soon as you hear the front door click shut, and while you manage to keep much cooler than he does during the ensuing argument, you get the feeling you’ve lost.

 

 

"I want my own room."

"I know, Dirk."

"Just thinking out loud, but I appreciate the inane commentary as per usual."

"Obviously, since it’s not going to happen. The only other bedroom is the master — Bro might not be around much more than he was before mom and dad died, but it’s still his property now. I mean, unless you want to risk certain death via Japanese novelty sword, in which case, be my guest. And leave me your headphones."

"It is abso-fucking-lutely remarkable that you manage to be closer to me genetically than anyone I’ve ever met and still be the the most insufferable asshole I’ve ever met."

"It’s probably just a similarity clash. We’re enough alike that I get on your nerves more than most people."

"We’re nothing alike."

"Tell yourself what you like, Dirk."

"We’re not."

Normally, you’d carry out the argument as far as it could go, but as it stands you’re stumbling as calmly as you can down the ladder and across the dark expanse of your bedroom and God, there’s something wrong with you, it’s the most he’s spoken to you in weeks and you were already halfway to a hard-on and the bathroom is only four more steps away, three steps, two—

You sit on the bathroom tiles for 20 minutes afterward and wonder if Dirk can actually hate you more than you hate yourself in this moment.

 

 

At some point during your junior year, you start to think that maybe the problem isn’t that Dirk wants too much space — it’s that you don’t want enough. And maybe that’s a good thing. If you’re the problem, you have the power to control it. So you amplify the parts of your personality that annoy him, push aside the ones that don’t, and resign yourself to a remaining two years of particularly potent sibling rivalry until you part ways to go to college.

If only.

The problem is that the intensifying animosity between you only makes the occasional moments of near-gentleness that much more difficult to stomach. One night before an exam he falls asleep studying at his desk, and you can’t quite resist the urge to pick him up and carry him to bed; when his on-again-off-again relationship with English falls into particularly nasty off-again territory, you leave him alone and pay for take-out from the Chinese place he loves so much.

He doesn’t see as much weakness in you, because your method is to put up walls upon walls while his just to ignore you entirely, but when Bro (on one of his few nights in) chastises you for your desolate chemistry grade, he slides his annotated copy of the text book across the desk to you and starts to explain the current unit in terms as simple as possible.

Aside from the occasional lapse, everything’s still as frosty as usual. You tell yourself you don’t love him, that your ribs may feel like he’s cracked them open and your nervous system feels like ice cracking in spirals beneath his feet, that he’s your brother and it’s normal and you’re just hormonal and—

You start to get desperate.

 

 

The fight isn’t pretty. The guy might be drunk and far less skilled in martial arts than Dirk is, but he’s still got 50 pounds and half a football scholarship on each of you — more than enough to inflict damage. As it stands, Dirk’s lucky to get both you and himself back to his piece of shit car with nothing more serious than a bloody nose.

"What in the  _fuck_ possessed you to go to that fucking party?” Dirk says, like you don’t go out every night to God-knows-where. It occurs to you that this is such a wild jump from his usual persona, but it’s always been this way — Dirk only ever allows himself to break the cool-calm-collected bullshit facade in front of you. Maybe that’s why he hates you so much.

Your reply is little more than a belligerent mumble. “Why do you care? You hate me, remember?” That probably comes out a lot sulkier than you intended, but you’re too drunk to give a shit.

"Why do I—? Hal—" His knuckles are white on the steering wheel; you wonder if he’s too angry to speak or if he’s just tired. He was probably sleeping when Roxy or whoever called him. When he speaks again, it’s after a long, soft sigh, and his voice is a lot quieter. Almost vulnerable. "I don’t hate you. Hal. You’re my br—  I could never hate you."

You’re suddenly very, very tired — enough so that you can’t repress the shiver that ripples over your shoulders. When he clicks off the A/C and passes you his sweatshirt, he almost looks concerned.

"Sorry ‘bout the blood on your jacket," you mumble as you burrow your nose in the hood. "Wish it was mine."

 

 

He insists on teaching you self-defense after that, starting fresh off your second cup of Ovaltine the next morning. You bitch as much as possible, less because you mind and more to gauge where exactly you stand with him right now. When you woke up this morning he was exponentially more sympathetic to your hangover than usual, even poured got you Lucky Charms when your stomach was back in the land of the living. You’ve become so accustomed to the usual belligerence that not knowing where your relationship is is the last thing you want.

And there’s one more problem.

Dirk is a very physical teacher, and does not believe in going soft on beginners. Within thirty minutes, he’s pinned you twice and guided your limbs twice more than that, and with another half hour left in your lesson you are very much digging through your mental dead-animals-and-naked-old-people folder. Which works just fine.

For all of five minutes. And then he’s straddling your waist with his hands on your shoulder, and oh God oh God oh God he’s explaining your mistakes without moving, this time, his legs pressed against your sides and his breath warm and heavy on your cheek and—

There’s a trip in his explanation, a stumble that triggers the inevitable trickling to a stop: you look to your side, at the carpet, anywhere that doesn’t let you see his eyes widen and jaw unclench. Not that it does you much good. He takes one hand from your shoulder and forces your chin straight, leans down like he wasn’t close enough to look at you before. For the first time that you remember, you can’t read his expression at all.

"Maybe we should break." Your voice is embarrassingly high in pitch, but you don’t care you don’t care you don’t care, you just want  _out, now._

He’s off of your in seconds, and for once you’re the one to lock the bedroom door behind you.

 

 

"Dirk," you say quietly. Your stomach is killing you and your fingers won’t go still around your boxers, and his name almost catches in your throat. You hope he doesn’t answer.

"Hmm?" is his sleep-gruff reply, but it’s little enough that you don’t bother continuing until he murmurs, "What is it?"

"I need to talk to you about. About something important."

"Shoot." It takes a few minutes of you silently imagining starbursts in your ceiling, eating through the wood and spackle and bleeding in from the night sky, for him to say, "Come down here."

You weren’t exactly expecting that kind of offer, but you haven’t shared a bed since you were seven, and your throat goes so tight you think you might actually die if you don’t move. The bedframes creak as you shimmy down the ladder; it occurs to you that maybe you’re getting too big for bunk beds.

You hover awkwardly at the edge of the lower bunk until he scoots toward the wall and pulls back the blankets,at which point you figure you’re never going to get a more open invitation. He props himself up on one shoulder, facing you even as you lie on your back.

"I need to know that you don’t hate me," you say bluntly, and overall you’re mostly pleased by how not-small your voice sounds. Like you’re discussing the weather or the scar on your chemistry teacher’s face, less like you’re asking him not to hate you and more like you’re daring him to prove he does.

But then his arm is around your waist and he’s sighing into your hair and something in you falters, and you have to close your eyes against the thin slat of him in your peripheral vision. “I could never,” he murmurs. His thumb moves in absent circles through the cotton of your t-shirt like he knows you’re freaking out; you feel like you’re dying and it’s terrible, it’s wonderful, it’s terrible. “I could never hate you.”

You’re probably just hearing what you want to hear, just feeling what you want to feel in the brush of his lips against your hair — but for right now, it’s enough.


End file.
